Oops.... sorry, that was a total brain storm on my part, I thought Neeel made that post. I just misread it. FWIW, I'm always happy to test my beliefs and see if they stand up to scrutiny. If you want to ask me anything about my belief system go ahead.

I think you're wrong about what Islam says about the crucifixion, it's not as simple as 'it didn't happen', but I'm not really interested in trying to prove the Qur'an right to make it as credible as the bible because I don't believe you can simply discount it the way you seem to be doing because of that one issue. So, for the sake of argument, we accept that the Qur'an made one mistake, it is therefore no longer credible enough to act as an account of miracles that makes it more likely that those miracles took place? I think this is very weak position to take and that you should also be taking the miracles of Allah as seriously as you take those recorded in the bible.

Or, can I assume then, since you consider the bible to be credible, but not the Qur'an, because of this one discrepancy, that you believe in biblical inerrancy? If you were aware that the bible contained a discrepancy with some historical record, then it would similarly lose it's credibility with you?


Yes, and I'm curious about why you don't believe that it was Allah that 'revealed' himself to you. How does one tell the difference? Can you describe an actual experience to help me understand how you knew it was the Christian god and not the Islamic god?


What I said was that I can understand how mystical experiences can be authoritative to those who experience then but I rejected James' claim that they have an intellectual right to be authoritative. So my position is consistent I think. I think you have been convinced by what you think you've experiences but you shouldn't' have been, in fact, that you couldn't have been convinced by these specific experiences without the use of a technique for circumventing the need for real evidence, that we call 'faith'.

I'm quite certain that there are claims I could make that you would not accept without evidence, but you go from 'voice in my head' to 'god' without requiring any more evidence that your own interpretation, and interpretation that is necessarily informed and influenced by your own narrative.

Interesting to know. So not only are all non-Christians wrong, but quite a lot of Christians who follow the same god as you are wrong too if they think that believing is enough. What are the criteria for 'accepted' Christ?

Think I meant brain fart, not brain storm.

Sigh.

It is not just one "mistake", although I don't think that is the appropriate word. Saying things like "Christ was never crucified" is not a mistake, per se, just not historically accepted. It could still be true.

Look into it, they make claims that are found in the apocryphal writings (from what I've read) which historians take to be unreliable.

As for the bible, it's not about finding discrepancies, it is common for eye witness accounts to have discrepancies between other accounts of the same incident, that is to be expected.

I've tried to explain this unsuccessfully. I've said in the past that it's like trying to articulate what pain feels like.

Understanding that these experiences are convincing, is in my opinion, what it means to accept these experiences. To only accept that it happened, but that it is meaningless and easily dismissed, it not really committing to accepting them. I've said that for me to reject these experiences, I'm also using faith, and likewise making assumptions and forming beliefs. It's not as easy as just hand-waiving these away, or else I would.

It's not all about evidence, it's interpretation of the evidence. We all don't see it the same.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’"


You brain-farted the brain fart.

Most Muslims don't think it's untrue that Jesus was crucified, there are some who do abstract that from the relevant passage but the rest just think that he didn't actually die on the cross, because his body was immortal, which makes sense to me. If Jesus was god, how can you kill god and even if his body died, He didn't, so the Islamic version I actually find more credible and coherent at this point. Why don't you? If your answer starts with 'It says in the bible....' then can you do me a favour and find an independent source? One that doesn't rely on the bible being offered as an accurate source supported by the assumption that the bible is an accurate source.

I don't even think that your discrepancy really is a discrepancy but what actually matters to my point is that the Bible and The qur'an are about as equal as it's possible to be when it comes to 'accounts' that make something more likely to have happened. What you're saying is exactly the same as what Muslims say about the bible, but you're not convinced by them, why not? You've admitted that you're not a well versed on the Qur'an, can you be certain that there is no element of bias in your viewpoint?

I can describe different types of pain and tell you where it's hurting, and probably why it's hurting. How can you distinguish between different deities? Before you had the experiences you didn't know which deity was real, at that point any of them could have been real, correct? So how do you know which god it was that was speaking to you?

Partially correct, it's not committing to a particular interpretation precisely because that interpretation is going to be biased, you can't help but be biased. Knowing that, I think you should be more circumspect and cautious about your interpretation, but instead you claim to understand that Jesus is real and active in your life. It's not saying though that they are meaningless, they have a meaning, it's just that you shouldn't be so sure that you know what it is.

From my perspective you made them appear with a hand waive and we've already covered the issue of it requiring faith to stop believing in something that you used to faith to believe. It makes no sense. 'I must believe because I believe' is not a meaningful justification. Reasonable people are always prepared to change their minds, no? They don't take a stand and refuse to budge from it, because they've taken that stand. You can offer other reasons for not thinking you should change your mind but 'it's what I believe' shouldn't really be one of therm.

This doesn't change that you would demand evidence to support certain claims, you wouldn't simply accept them, but you've done that with a religion.

Can you translate this for me? I don't understand how this is explaining what it means to 'accept' Jesus.

Yup, I'm on a roll.

The whole point of this was that you asked me if I would consider Islam, and if it would be coherent for me. From the research I've done, it's more difficult to say that the Quran is as historically reliable, and thus, would be more difficult to make this particular document coherent with Allah revealing himself to me.

Even still, this is somewhat irrelevant, since I never felt that Allah had revealed himself, or I would have taken this path, instead. Perhaps I would have found a way to reconcile the claims that it is unreliable, but it's irrelevant to me at this point.

I don't think you can describe every human emotion to someone who has not already experienced it. You end up using adjectives or using analogies of experiences that you both have in common.

I am unable to explain a spiritual revelation, except to say that it is by it's nature, revelatory. Even if incorrect, there is an inherent message.

I've already conceded that I can't "know what it is". I'm still required to make an interpretation, including ignoring it (which is itself an interpretation - that it's unimportant or incorrect) you simply do not approve of my interpretation.

You're not really looking at this objectively. You're not conceding that God could be revealing himself, but you're presupposing that you're right. The nature of these experiences are that they could indeed be from Christ, or they could not be from Christ. Since you are unable to interpret this, since they are not your own experiences, you should be able to grant me the fact that I've chosen the most convincing interpretation to myself, instead of objecting that I'm not interpreting it correctly, especially since I've conceded that I could be misinterpreting this.

Jesus is specifically speaking to people that believe in him, but are not saved. My point was to show that more than a belief is required for salvation. Faith in Christ is more than a belief in Christ.

This is only true if (a/b) is higher than the apriori probability of any miracle having happened.

a = number of miracles written down and having actually happened
b = total number of alleged miracles written down

If miracles that actually happened are written down proportonially less frequently than made-up miracles then written accounts do not make more likely to be true.

So you're confident in dismissing a 1400 year old account, of good character (it's religious after all) that is believed by over a billion people as not credible enough to follow the general principle (as described by OrP) that the accounts that it contains of miracles make it a least marginally more likely that those miracles actually happened?

This seems hypocritical to me because you wouldn't (don't) accept similar justifications for dismissing the bible, from a Muslim.

I think that what you are unable to explain is your subjective interpretation of these experiences any more than anyone could really communicate such an experience. How do we explain why we love one sport over others, or a particular person? But, those are real things, and the problem we're having is that you're not describing something that is easily verified as real, in fact there's no convincing evidence to support the existence of the god that you claim your personal experiences revealed to you at all.

Since I can't accept your highly subjective and commonly acknowledged as unreliable personal experiences as proof of anything except perhaps your own biases, and throughout the conversation have really gained no more of an insight into why they're so convincing to you despite being so unreliable, and I don't accept the other 'evidence' you've offered because in large part it was the bible which is only evidence of historical events that add nothing meaningful to the possibility of divine powers really existing, I'm still at a loss as to how you find it 'easy' to believe this over any other religious accounts, or the perfectly reasonable alternative of keeping your options open while we learn more about what we observe, whcih is essentially what I'm doing, or why you think it was God and not Allah that revealed himself to you.

In any other context, if for example you were trying to explain why your brand loyalty to McDonalds over Burger King, in the same ambiguous fashion that you are with your religious beliefs, I would simply believe that you had been more successfully primed by McDonalds than BK.


Because I have no good reason to believe that god revealed himself to you. I'll say the words' it's possible' in the same way that you'll say the words 'I could be deluded'. I do grant that you've chosen the most convincing explanation, that's where we started, what I still don't have are reasons that I find 'good' for why it convinces you. I accept that you believe it, what I can't accept is why you believe it.


But it didn't give any explanation of what you should do to 'accept him', is there more to support that?

There is some bugs in the language we use to describe these things as well. A story can't be factual without being a story. The existence of a story doesn't make it more likely that the story is factual, it merely makes it possible for this likelihood to be something other than 0. To make it more likely would imply that the likelihood would become greater than 0, which doesn't follow.

Is there some difference between a 'story' and an 'historical account', does one of them perhaps have implied credibility that the other lacks? In French, the word for story and the word for history are the same, 'l'histoire'. They must distinguish them some other way.

I'm happy to accept both the Bible and the Qur'an as historical accounts, i.e. a recording of eyewitness testimony, despite there being many other possibilities (propaganda, lies, genuine error etc) because I don't believe that it actually adds any meaningful credibility to any of the stories about 'divine' acts contained in either. Despite being witnessed by many millions of people, magicians can't actually make people disappear and the only reason we all accept that is because (mostly) we know magic isn't real. So I think this issue comes down to credulity. People accept the bible as proof of divine acts, because they want to.

That is (etymologically speaking) a tricky question. History can be synonymous with story, and they come from the same Latin word (which is likely why in french there is only one word). It can mean "historical account" (narrative of past events), but has also come to signify "narrative of fictional events". In my native language we do not have the word story, only history ("historie"), and it is synomous to narrative ("narrativ").

In my post I used "story" in the meaning of "narrative".

That's not how it works.

Assign a prior probablity to a miracle happening P(M). Following Hume we can say that this probability is very very very small (if it wasn't, it wouldn't count as a miracle).

Now we have some hypothetical evidence, E, which will take the form of a written account of M happening.

One of these mutually exclusive statements must be true:

1) P(M|E) > P(M|~E) ------> [probability of M given E is higher than probability of M given no-E]
2) P(M|E) < P(M|~E) ------> [vice versa]

If you think 1) is correct then you agree with Original Position. If you think 2) is correct, then you are saying we should be more confident about the posterior probability of a miracle occuring in the event that there is some (however weak!) evidence for it, than if there is no evidence for it at all. In which case please leave your Rationalist Police badge and gun at the door on your way out.

That doesn't mean the posterior probability of M becomes greater than 50% or whatever, just that evidence for M must increase confidence in M.

The bit that really bakes my noodle is trying to see a claim of a low probability event, and a claim of low probability supernatural event, as equivalent claims, when trying to use the latter claim to prove that the supernatural exists at all. An account of someone who flipped a coin into the air for it land on it's edge is low probability, an account claiming that it happened because the person flipping the coin was a divine agency offered as proof of a divine agency is an entirely different claim for me.

Is this a bit like Anselm's Ontological argument in that it relies on something being possible just because you can imagine it, that once the claim is made, it's now out there, being a possibility?

It would be arbitrary for me to believe in Allah. The fact that you're so insistent that I should not reject Islam, but at the same time you insist that I should reject Christianity because I have "no evidence", is perplexing to me.

There is no evidence, or you do not find the evidence convincing? Two very different things. My spiritual experiences, although not evidence to you, is evidence to me.

That's totally fine you don't accept it, you don't need to.

Yes, you'd find it more reasonable for me to reject God, but from my perspective that is not the most reasonable conclusion.

That's fine, I don't expect you to take my personal experiences as proof that you should believe, but for you to insist that it is not proof for me to believe, is odd. You've constructed a world-view where God cannot speak to anyone, because it would be unreliable. You're looking at this from the perspective that God doesn't exist, therefore any spiritual revelation is simply misinterpreted. I'm looking at it as if God could or could not exist, and spiritual revelations could or could not mean that God reveals himself, and I find the explanation that he indeed does reveal himself more satisfactory. You've rejected the conclusion before even examining the evidence.

Faith that Christ died and was resurrected, and a confession and active faith is required.

Even for the aliens in Ken ham's thread? Or babies...

I can imagine, but I'm not doing that, I haven't insisted that you reject any religions, I'm not even sure where you're getting that from. You've moved from my assertion that your personal experiences shouldn't be enough to convince you of the truth of Christianity to 'you should reject Christianity'. I'm simply saying that it should be only one of your many choices and I'm trying to understand how you so confidently made that choice.

Also, you sidestepped the actual question. Which was - So you're confident in dismissing a 1400 year old account, of good character (it's religious after all) that is believed by over a billion people as not credible enough to follow the general principle (as described by OrP) that the accounts that it contains of miracles make it a least marginally more likely that those miracles actually happened?

The reasons that they are not evidence to me are the same reasons that I think they shouldn't be evidence to you. You've claimed that you're not putting your fingers in your ears and yet despite the mounting evidence in Psychology that our personal interpretations of what we experience are quite untrustworthy, that our brains seem structured to regularly fool us, you simply ignore that and insist on believing your interpretations.


I think you're missing my point here. In any other context than a supernatural one, if this were a conversation about brand loyalty, and you failed to give any good reasons for why you preferred one brand over another, if your reasons were as ambiguous as the ones you've given to support your faith in the Christian version of god over otehrs, or non-belief, I would look to other factors to explain that such the success of marketing campaigns intended to create brand loyalty. I think Christianity primed you better than did Islam, or any of the other belief systems, and that's probably a big part of the explanation for your beliefs. Cultural influence is one of the most common reasons for belief.

I would happily admit that I might only believe something because it was culturally transferred to me. There isn't a belief system that I have that I wouldn't rather were replaced by the truth, if it were possible to do that. There's nothing that I just cling to because I already believe it.

I don't see why it's odd. If I told you that I believed that eating lemon jelly caused children aged 5 to dissolve, and this had been told to me to a pink elephant in a tutu, it wouldn't be odd for you to wonder how I could possibly be convinced of that. 'I know what I saw/experienced' is not convincing to me and if I didn't apply the same standards to you I wouldn't be being consistent would I. You are applying your standards to yourself of being convinced by personal experience of the truth of Jesus Christ, and then saying that Muslim's experiences of the truth of Allah are wrong. So it seems to me that if either of us is being inconsistent, it's you?

No, I'm not, I'm looking at this from the perspective of not having any good reason to believe that the Christian god exists any more than any other god. I'm receptive to those good reasons, if and when I hear them.

Yes but it doesn't matter how many times you repeat that it's satisfactory, or easy, it doesn't necessarily make it rational. I'm still waiting for some evidence to examine, you've skipped the requirement for evidence by using faith and gone straight to believing.

What form does the confession take?

The bible doesn't explicitly state this one way or another, but I believe the implication is that babies are not culpable.

You claim you don't insist that I should reject Christianity, but it's the implication you make when you suggest that there is no evidence that makes this a logical choice, and that you've insinuated that Islam is perhaps more suited for me.

For starters, I'm not dismissing the entire account. Secondly, I wouldn't make the claim that it's not credible enough, as a whole. Which particular claim are you speaking of? I can't just lump the Quran into one claim, since they make many claims, some of which may be more reliable than others. I've stated that I've found some claims to be historically unreliable, namely Jesus not being crucified.

I also insist this isn't a problem for me, because I'm not interested in pursuing Islam, nor have I studied the entire book.

You have concluded that God doesn't exist, so he can't reveal himself. IF God did exist, this claim is silly. Obviously God could speak to you, and reveal himself to you. You have set up a system where even if God exists and speaks to you, you would need to reject it as having insufficient evidence.

I've repeatedly stated that I could be misinterpreting, but you should reevaluate the stance you've taken, where God is simply unable to communicate, and the only answer must be a misinterpretation.

If you could make a claim that I couldn't immediately test and disprove, it would be a better analogy.

Ignoring these experiences is less rational from my perspective. I get that you don't agree, but since they are not your experiences, you should be able to objectively concede that I may have chosen the best conclusion, since you are not privy to my mind.

There is no one right answer, so long as your faith is active.

Then the must be saved and requirements like active faith should have an asterisk.

Perhaps it should, although it can be argued that it is implied.

For instance, we understand that animals do not need redemption, since they are not capable of receiving God's gift, etc., but this doesn't imply that animals go to hell, only that they are not accountable.

Some dont imply it so making that assumption with some Christians would be wrong. Just seeing where you stand.

Then there is aliens, if they exist... much harder on strict salvation views then animals or babies imo. Might have to condemn billions of beings.

The assumption here is that these aliens are made in the image of God, and would require salvation. They could simply be like animals, where there is no need to atone for them.

Intelligence doesn't necessarily equal to needing atonement, even if just hypothetical. Consider dolphins. They are very intelligent, and you would likely not argue that they may be doomed. Likewise if we discovered a planet full of dolphin-like creatures, it doesn't follow that they need to be atoned for. Only if we discovered a planet of human-beings, would this question ever be relevant.

When you decide in advance that you want to reject X, then you should clearly reject things that could be used to support X because of lasagna.

Extrapolating from a narrative where an evil snake foils God's plan for creation seems rather inconsequential when discussing how extraterrestrial life fits into the universe spiritually.

Yes, but not when the question is concerned with biblical salvation. I can only answer such a question by referencing the bible.

And here we again have the issue that I was pointing to earlier. Why does Naked_Rectitude have a "huge" burden of proof here? Since he is explicitly acknowledging that he is unable to demonstrate that his belief is true, why does he need to do more? Is it your view that in order to hold a belief at all you owe it to your epistemic peers to be able to demonstrate to them that your belief is true?